Space mining company AstroForge identifies asteroid target for Odin launch next month

[Admin]

AstroForge has identified asteroid 2022 OB5 as the destination for its Mission 2 spacecraft, named Odin, which is set to launch next month on a SpaceX rocket.

Space mining company AstroForge identifies asteroid target for Odin launch next month : Read more

 

[Unclear Engineer]

It would be nice to get a sample of a real "metallic" asteroid, especially if it is really a fragment of the core of a demolished differentiated planetary body.

But, how do they plan to get "representative" sample of the central part of this asteroid? Even if it is mostly a solid chunk of metal, its surface could still be covered with soft space dust and pebbles after billions of years of gravitational collection.

 

[Ken Fabian]

As is too common and a bit frustrating there isn't much information about the methods they intend using and certainly not a glimpse of their business plan.

Sounds like the intention is to use a vaporising and separating method of PGM extraction, which I wasn't aware of as a commercial process - or as something applied to nickel-iron for this purpose. Electric arc rather than laser (lasers being very energy inefficient as a heating method) is my guess. I had been expecting Mond process - "dissolving" in carbon monoxide gas and vapor deposition, used commercially for extracting nickel, that has been proposed as a refining method for asteroid Ni-Fe, however I wonder if it actually works the way I had thought (separation of nickel and iron leaving a residue of the rest, rich in cobalt and PGM's). Some lab somewhere has likely tried it with metal meteorites but I haven't found examples. But how the mining and refining is done is still only a part of the whole exercise.

Much as they appear to have the most nickel-iron, therefore most PGM's, asteroids don't have to be M-class to have a lot of nickel-iron. Ni-Fe is very abundant, although there are variations in PGM concentrations - different Ni-Fe alloys, with higher PGMs are linked with higher nickel content. The extent to which they are found separately isn't clear.

I'm inclined to favour C-class carbonaceous asteroids that are likely to have an abundant sufficiency of Ni-Fe as grains and nodules within a softer carbonaceous matrix - for the ability to make the other things asteroid mining needs, things like rocket fuel, that I would expect to be the single largest ongoing "consumable" required.

Transport costs are what makes doing things in space so expensive; typically many times more rocket fuel than payload. I do think the efficiency and cost of the rocketry is crucial to the economics and the ability to produce fuel on-site seems crucial to cutting costs. M-class asteroids seem less likely to have the means to make rocket fuel or chemical feedstocks for more complex refinining methods and/or making the machinery and equipment on-site.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Making actual mining a commercially viable enterprise seems pretty remote, at this time. But getting a representative sample of something that was once the core of a differentiated planetary body might provide some very interesting scientific data.

For now. geologists assume that Earth's core is mostly iron, with other heavy elements like uranium mixed in. Ratios are estimated from surface samples, seismic wave analyses, ultra high pressure lab experiments, and modelling. It would be nice to get a sample, but we cannot do that on Earth - too far down, and too hot. With too much not really understood about the different layers and blobs seen in seismic data.

 

[Ken Fabian]

The mission is a fly-by reconnaissance. The previous failed one, required rendezvous, but didn't appear to have any return capability. I am deeply doubtful this will achieve commercial viability, any more than the other, failed asteroid mining companies - but without a better overview of what they intend it is hard to find much optimism that the big issues (like transport) are being addressed.

At least with NASA missions the results of their surveying go into the public domain; whatever this mission learns will be private property, and when the company fails what they learn is likely to be lost.